Author's Note

First off, the origin for Cadance in this story is NOT going to follow the MLP comics.
Most of the rest should roughly parallel canon--except for where it doesn't.

I hope you enjoy.

Finally Found!

“…And lastly, 450 bits for the upkeep of the parks,” Shining Armor tiredly muttered as he finished reading off the list written on the budgetary scroll. “Annnd—that completes this year’s budget,” he said with a sigh of relief.

“How many of the parks does that cover?” Princess Mi Amore Cadenza, aka Princess Cadance, absently inquired as she reviewed and signed off on the items.

“All of them, fortunately,” her husband replied, stretching out his back to pop the kinks that had developed from hours of sitting in their office.

“That’s good,” she said, nodding in approval and smiling at his display. She had just learned from their physician this morning that she was pregnant, and she had spent most of the day thinking of a good way to surprise Shining with the news.

Perhaps let him know while in the middle of reenacting how I got pregn—?

However, a knock at the door to their chambers stopped any further thoughts she was developing in that direction.

“Apologies for interrupting, Your Highnesses,” their crystal pony assistant, Polished Gloss, addressed them as she entered. “An external guard patrol reports they found another one. Encased the same as before.”

“Uh—how many does that make just this month alone? Ten!?” Shining groaned. “One thing you can say about King Sombra, he was very prolific in making enemies. Not very imaginative on how he went about executing them, though. Although, I suppose that was the only thing we can find admirable about him: he was consistent. Not the sort of pony to do much experimentation, looking for more efficient means to commit crimes.”

“Only this one appears to be the skeletal remains of a dragon,” Polished Gloss said, “killed in the act of leaping to attack, it seems.”

“A dragon?” Cadance asked with surprise. “I didn’t know there were any dragons involved with fighting him!”

“And skeletal remains, you say?” Shining asked, puzzled. “That’s rather odd. Their scales are just as resilient as their bones and shouldn’t rot away. Certainly not being encased in crystal like that. The poor creature must have been hit with some blast to strip away the flesh the instant before Sombra encased it. Ask the guard to come in to give his report, please.”

“Yes, Your Highness,” she replied, stepping back to motion to somepony beyond the entrance.

“What are you thinking?” Cadance asked Shining as the sergeant came in.

“Maybe somepony fighting alongside King Sombra?” Shining surmised. “A blast strong enough to strip a dragon of its flesh would take too much out of any unicorn, even one as powerful as King Sombra, before he could follow up with his standard crystal spell. And on top of that, there’s the effort it would take to pose the poor creature’s remains for le dramatique before encasing it? That’s not like King Sombra’s style at all, at least so far as we know. Yes, Sergeant Conundrum? Report, please.”

“Yes, sir!” Conundrum said saluting. “We were conducting a standard recon in our assigned sector, about fifteen leagues beyond our border out along vector 237…”

Out of the corner of his eye, Shining noticed how Cadance reacted with a surprised start.

“…when we came across what at first appeared to be another of the usual remains of King Sombra’s victims,” the sergeant continued, oblivious to her reaction. “Of course, details are always hard to make out due to the darkness of the crystals. Fortunately, for most of those encounters. But in this one, there appeared to be the skeletal remains of a relatively young dragon that was caught in midleap when it was killed.”

“And you could see its bones?” Shining pressed.

“Yes, sir. At least, we think so,” he replied. “We did think it odd, since we do know that dragon scales are just as strong as their bones. Even odder was, well it was difficult to make out, but it did look like it was wearing some sort of armor, too.”

“Armor!?” Shining asked perplexed. “Since when do dragons ever need to wear armor!?”

“Well, sir, that was our conclusion based on what we could see. It might be something else, we just don’t know,” Conundrum explained. “Of course, it might simply be a type of dragon we’ve never seen before because we could see it had feathered wings.”

“FEATHERED WINGS!?” Cadance exclaimed in shock.

“Yes, Your Highness,” Sergeant Conundrum confirmed. “Strange looking feathers, at that. Plus, the trailing edges seem to have some sort of glow to them.”

“Cadance?” Shining inquired, concerned about the strong reaction his wife was having.

“H-how—how old would you say this dragon was?” Cadance pressed, standing up. Shining could tell that she was trembling in shock.

“Hmm—Hard to say. Based on its size, probably close to that of the current age of Spike the Magnificent. Maybe something like a decade older, or so.”

“Take me to him! Now!” she commanded. “And summon Doctor Quartz!”

“Cadance? Do you know anything about this?” Shining asked her.

“Part of me hopes it is what I think it is,” she said, looking back at him as she followed Sergeant Conundrum out through the door. “Part of me prays that it’s not!”

On their way out to the locale, Cadance told the entire team about how King Sombra had taken over the Empire, of her harrowing escape after her parents were killed, and of the ones who helped her get away. She told them there was much more to the tale of the ones who helped her, but suffice to say, they weren’t dragons—

“Well—not exactly—although anypony seeing them should easily be forgiven mistaking them for such,” she explained. “They were actually metallic golems that had been constructed by a friend who had perished just prior to King Sombra’s usurpation.

“When King Sombra killed my parents and took over, they all fought to get me out to safety. We had taken shelter in a cave for a few days immediately after leaving the Empire,” she told them, “while we tried to wait out his search parties for a more opportune time to make good on our escape. I do remember it was about fifteen leagues out and around vector 240 as measured from the Castle, give or take.

“However, we were eventually located, and we had to fight a pitched battle to get away.

“After the Empire returned and we rescued the Crystal Heart, I came out here several times alone trying to locate the site, but I could never find it again. Sergeant Conundrum’s report of this latest find along 237 at fifteen leagues is quite close to my recollection, and I do remember that no other remains had ever been found out this way before now. If this is him—”

As was typical in the immediate environs just outside the Crystal Empire, the area was a frozen wasteland of bare icy and snow-covered rocky ground, liberally mixed with more icy and snow-covered rocky ground, a confusing cluster of ravines cutting the earth into collections of narrow trails among small hills with sharp steep cliffs, where no life-giving plants ever grew. Suffice to say, the region was the literally the ultimate definition of “bleak”. However, that’s didn’t mean the land was lifeless. Far from it. There was plenty of life out there. Just not the kind any sane creature would ever want to meet.

Fortunately for the pony guard teams that had to patrol the area, such life was quite sparse, although one never knew when one of their less-than-friendly neighbors would come calling to visit for a meal or two. And so, they remained very alert whenever they needed to venture out.

The patrol, led by Sergeant Conundrum, was especially on edge to protect the Royal Couple, so they kept a wary eye out for anything that might like to try to make a meal from the available options at the site.

Trying to stay out of everypony’s way, Shining Armor and Princess Cadance stood on the ridge overlooking the scene in the ravine where a cluster of eleven huge crystal obelisks which nearly filled the shallow canyon as they jutted up from the ground. Most of the crystals were intersecting the same relative volume of space. Everypony could just make out the shadowy figure within that volume of space that had been encased from over a thousand years ago, and it certainly bore a remarkable resemblance to something that no sane, or even insane, creature would ever want to meet under any circumstances.

At the base of the cluster, Doctor Quartz, the preeminent pathologist as well as an expert on crystals, performed his own closeup survey of the structure and the being morbidly encased inside. With so many corpses left trapped in such crystals scattered about both within and without the Empire at the end of King Sombra’s reign, quite a lot of ponies made it their specialty to develop the skills to respectfully recover the remains and give them proper burials. Doctor Quartz was one such pony.

“Oh, dear Faust, it is him!” Cadance softly sobbed, burying her face in his mane. “This is where we were the last time I saw him!”

“The one who got you out of here?” Shining asked.

“No, the others got me out,” she replied looking sadly back down at the being trapped within the monstrous crystal structure. “He stayed behind to buy us time to get away. They let me know he had been—stopped—however it was they knew of it. I’m afraid it was a trick known only to them and their creator. Later, they came back with Aunties Celestia and Luna, hoping to get him free, leaving me at the Castle of the Sisters. They—they didn’t make it. My aunties told me their remains were buried after King Sombra cursed the Empire to disappear. It’s going to be rather difficult, I’m afraid, to locate where they’re interred. But we’ve got to try! He should be buried with his brothers.”

“Doctor Quartz!” she called out. “It’s vital that we recover him intact so that we can show our proper respects.”

“Of course, Your Highness,” he called back, nodding. “I fully understand. I’ll do my best, but this is an exceptionally large crystal—well several crystals—that King Sombra used on him. This is going to take some time to find the right locations to start cutting.”

Quartz turned back to the monolith—or rather the polylith—to continue his examination.

In addition to the number of crystal obelisks used, there were a number of other anomalies with this case that were unique to anything he previously encountered, or that he had heard about from his colleagues in the Victims Recovery Operations Field Guard Branch, of which he was the ranking member.

There was, as the patrol said, an odd glow coming from the trailing edges of all the feathers in the dragon’s wings. Dragons, for one, did not have feathered wings, like pegasi, griffons, hippogriffs, or harpies. But try as he might, he had a hard time believing what she said as he listened to Princess Cadance recount the event on their way out here. She insisted this victim wasn’t exactly a dragon. Standing there looking up at the entombed being, it sure looked like a dragon from what he could see of it. He shook his head clear of thoughts that had nothing to do with what was needed to recover the creature’s remains, however.

Certainly nothing about the crystals themselves should account for such a glow,[/] he thought to himself as he paced about the crystals and some of the dislodged stones from the ground from where the crystals had erupted.

These crystals are much the same Dark Magic imbued semiprecious stones as any other that King Sombra used to entomb his victims, if just considerably more of them and the size used. But given that he was actively fighting a dragon, creatures that have both an appetite and the ability to eat crystals, these factors shouldn’t be at all surprising.

Although there is a bit more refraction and opacity than what is normal, he noted with a puzzled frown as he put a hoof on the nearest surface. Especially, the closer one looks toward the dragon, he considered as he peered deeper into the matrix. It’s as if the index of refraction is gradually increasing the closer it gets to the body of the victim….

Eh? he wondered as he felt a strangely timed vibration pulsing through his hoof. He put his ear up to the crystal.

Tink!

Tink!

Tink!

Tink! Crackle!

Tink!

Tink!

That’s not right, he thought as he looked back up at the dragon. Then he frowned as he realized the index of refraction was slowly but noticeably increasing, even as he watched it. Puzzled, he went back to listening.

Tink!

Tink!

Tink!

Tink! Crick!

Tink! Crack! Crickle!

Tink!

Timed? Like clockwork? he wondered.

Tink!

Tink!

Tink!

His eyes went to pinpricks as realization suddenly struck him. And then he was running for his life!

“RUN! RUN! EVERYPONY TAKE COVER! RUUUUNNNNN!” Doctor Quartz started screaming.

The next moment, there was a tremendous explosion.

Then there was a loud continuous roaring noise that had nothing to do at all with the sound of an explosion.